Featured Research

Doctors' sense of mission, self-identity key in choice to work in underserved areas

Date:

October 27, 2010

Source:

University of California -- Los Angeles

Summary:

Medical schools and clinics could boost the number of primary care physicians in medically underserved areas by selecting and encouraging students from these communities, who often exhibit a strong sense of responsibility for and identification with the people there, according to a new study. In addition, training these students in underserved settings during medical school and their residencies could also increase the likelihood they would continue serving those populations. This could help alleviate the national shortage of primary care physicians.

Share This

Medical schools and clinics could boost the number of primary care physicians in medically underserved areas by selecting and encouraging students from these communities, who often exhibit a strong sense of responsibility for and identification with the people there, according to a new study by UCLA researchers and colleagues published in the current issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

Related Articles

Training these students in underserved settings during medical school and their residencies could also increase the likelihood they would continue serving those populations, the researchers found. Physicians-in-training who are not from underserved populations or who do not train in such areas are unlikely to work for any length in these communities.

The findings highlight the importance of identifying doctors who are motivated by mission-based values such as a sense of responsibility to a particular community or patient population early in medical training, said Dr. Kara Odom Walker, who led the study while in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars program at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

"In the current health care reform debate, if health insurance coverage increases, residents in areas with an inadequate physician supply will have greater difficulty receiving timely and appropriate clinical care, and this could create poorer population health indicators," said Walker, now an assistant clinical professor of family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

In their findings, which were based on in-depth interviews with 42 Los Angeles County African American, Hispanic and non-Hispanic white primary care physicians in both underserved and non-underserved areas, the researchers noted three themes that emerged to explain physicians' choice of practice location: personal motivators, career motivators and clinic support.

Physicians who worked in underserved areas were more likely to cite motivators such as personal mission and self-identity as reasons for their choice, compared with physicians who didn't work in those areas. Physicians who had never worked in or had left underserved areas, by contrast, cited factors such as work hours and lifestyle in their choice of practice location.

The authors noted that incentives such as loan-repayment reform for primary care medical students and more medical education opportunities for minorities and immigrants could help draw more physicians to critically underserved areas, which have been particularly hard hit, given the overall national shortage of primary care physicians.

"By using enlightened and informed recruitment strategies that seek out and develop a corps of motivated, mission-driven and committed primary care physicians and retaining them by employing strategies to improve work-life balance, we can meet the challenge of disparities in care among the underserved," the authors conclude. "The current health care reform debate provides unique opportunities to develop and implement such strategies."

The study has some limitations, the researchers noted. Despite using some strategies to reduce potential bias, the themes that emerged during the interviews were still subject to the researchers' interpretation. Also, the researchers found their interview subjects through referrals from a seven-member community advisory board, so the opinions expressed by the the surveyed physicians may not be representative of those from other areas.

The Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program funded the study.

Study co-authors included Arleen F. Brown and Robin Ramey of UCLA; Gery Ryan of the RAND Corp.; Felix L. Nunez of the Family Health Care Center of Greater Los Angeles; Robert Beltran of the Latino Med Policy Institute, and Robert G. Splawn of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

University of California -- Los Angeles. "Doctors' sense of mission, self-identity key in choice to work in underserved areas." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 27 October 2010. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101027160957.htm>.

University of California -- Los Angeles. (2010, October 27). Doctors' sense of mission, self-identity key in choice to work in underserved areas. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 3, 2015 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101027160957.htm

University of California -- Los Angeles. "Doctors' sense of mission, self-identity key in choice to work in underserved areas." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101027160957.htm (accessed March 3, 2015).

Mar. 3, 2015 — Why do people shake hands? A new study suggests one of the reasons for this ancient custom may be to check out each other's odors. Even if we are not consciously aware of this, handshaking may ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — It appears that stress markers in unemployed people can be found, independent of smoking, alcohol consumption and overweight/obesity. Results from a study suggest that long-term unemployment may be ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Doctors write millions of prescriptions a year for drugs to calm the behavior of people with Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia. But non-drug approaches actually work better, and carry ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Briefly counseling college students on the dangers of binge drinking is effective in lowering heavy drinking levels among many students, but only temporarily. Three out of four will be right back ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Body mass index in healthy adolescents has a statistically significant association with both systolic blood pressures and diastolic blood pressures, research shows, and it highlights the significance ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Loneliness brought about by the death of a spouse can trigger a wider network of depression-like symptoms, a study has found, but authors suggest that doctors are often too quick to attribute these ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Family Based Interpersonal Psychotherapy (FB-IPT) is more effective in treating preadolescent children with depression compared to child-centered therapy (CCT), a recent study has found. ... full story

Mar. 3, 2015 — Two of the four known groups of human AIDS viruses (HIV-1 groups O and P) have originated in western lowland gorillas, according to new research. The scientists conducted a comprehensive survey of ... full story

Featured Videos

Mom Triumphs Over Tragedy, Helps Other Families

AP (Mar. 3, 2015) — After her son, Dax, died from a rare form of leukemia, Julie Locke decided to give back to the doctors at St. Jude Children&apos;s Research Hospital who tried to save his life. She raised $1.6M to help other patients and their families. (March 3)
Video provided by AP

Woman Convicted of Poisoning Son

AP (Mar. 3, 2015) — A woman who blogged for years about her son&apos;s constant health woes was convicted Monday of poisoning him to death by force-feeding heavy concentrations of sodium through his stomach tube. (March 3)
Video provided by AP

Related Stories

Mar. 3, 2015 — The shortage of primary care doctors could worsen if funding for the Teaching Health Centers, a program to train medical residents in underserved areas, is eliminated in the United States, says a new ... full story

Sep. 23, 2014 — Among students who apply to and attend medical school, those from underrepresented minority backgrounds are more likely than white and Asian students to have attended a community college at some ... full story

June 12, 2013 — Despite a critical shortage of primary care in the United States less than 25 percent of newly minted doctors go into this field and only a tiny fraction, 4.8 percent, set up shop in rural areas, ... full story

Sep. 28, 2011 — An innovative program could help states deal with a dilemma in Washington, D.C. If deficit-reduction measures cut billions of dollars for training physicians who are already in short supply, who will ... full story

ScienceDaily features breaking news and videos about the latest discoveries in health, technology, the environment, and more -- from major news services and leading universities, scientific journals, and research organizations.